Married to the king of cocaine
Pablo Escobar’s widow unfolds a grim tale of infidelity, abuse and humiliation, writes Matthew Campbell.
He had a fleet of jets and helicopters and properties everywhere – one with an ice rink and a bowling alley. He even kept a fully stocked zoo for the amusement of guests at his country estate. Pablo Escobar, Colombia’s ‘‘king of cocaine’’, was once ranked as the world’s seventhrichest man, but the extraordinary luxury this loot afforded was tempered by a considerable downside, according to his widow. Victoria Eugenia Henao, and the two children she had with the drug baron, endured bombings, house arrests and constant danger when they went into hiding as his empire came crashing down in the late 1980s.
Henao also suffered countless humiliations. The head of the Medellin cartel seemed to put as much energy into seduction as he did into running his drugs empire. He entertained mistresses in riotous parties at a vast property that his security
detail codenamed ‘‘Frost’’ because of the ice rink. Ever attentive in romance, Escobar would shop in Miami for suitable gifts, from jewellery to tennis shoes, which he would buy in bulk and ship to the ranch for his girlfriends. ‘‘The size of his fortune was always matched by his drive to be surrounded by women,’’ writes Henao in this remarkable memoir.
Things did not always end well, she notes, for the mistresses. One of them was executed after betraying Escobar to the American Drug Enforcement Agency. Henao insists, however, that much as she resented these women, they served to keep her husband amused – and none of them ‘‘ever posed any danger to our marriage’’.
Her book, Mrs Escobar - My Life with Pablo, is the first time Henao has opened up about life with the drug lord since he was shot dead on a rooftop in Medellin in 1993.
One of the most striking aspects of her account is the excess she became used to.
Escobar fancied himself as a Colombian Robin Hood, with house-building projects for the poor. Elected as an MP in 1982, he dreamt of becoming president but was exposed as a drug trafficker by the justice minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, and lost his parliamentary immunity from prosecution. He got even by having Bonilla gunned down in 1984. It all went downhill from there.
Although he never spoke to his wife about his criminal dealings, she usually ended up hearing what was happening, sometimes years after the event, from his indiscreet henchmen. The huge sums he earned tended to vanish ‘‘in the blink of an eye’’, she writes, describing his taste for rare parrots and other unusual creatures. On a family outing to Dallas, Escobar handed over US$2 million in cash for a few animals to put in his zoo.
His greatest passion, though, was women. On one occasion he organised a two-hour power cut at a party so that he could sneak away from Henao to meet a girl waiting in a bedroom down the corridor. He built a flat ‘‘disguised behind the stables very close to the main house’’ at his Hacienda Napoles ranch (now a museum) in which to entertain women. He sometimes flew in exotic dancers from the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris just to liven up parties.
Why did Henao hang around? Was it just for the perks, including a hairdresser who went everywhere with her? It is a question Henao has asked herself over and over. ‘‘I was very young, naive and blind to reality, so I succumbed,’’ she writes, describing how she was abused by Escobar at the age of 14, before marrying him at 15. She was very much in love, she insists. The love, though, was tinged by fear: ‘‘I was afraid that the most dangerous man in Colombia might hurt me if I left him.’’
Access to Escobar’s incalculable wealth must have helped her through the dark days. Much of the considerable housekeeping budget went on art dealers and interior decorators who must have felt as though they had won the lottery. One dealer told Henao that hers was ‘‘the most important’’ art collection in Latin America – it included works by Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. But a lot of the pieces were destroyed in a bomb set off by Escobar’s rivals. It left a 4m crater outside the Medellin home that she and the children were forced to flee.
This engaging book will not have arrived soon enough for Netflix Narcos addicts craving more. It will also stand out as an invaluable text for any student of Colombia’s blood-drenched, modern history. – Sunday Times